Chapter Sixty-Six. Daye
Daye
“Take it off.” Spring clung to her skin like an invisible film. Trapped, her mind echoed, trapped, trapped, trapped.
“Daye, I swear, I thought you knew.”
“Rory, you have to take it off. Undo whatever it is you did.” They waded out of the lake on the spring side. The sun seemed dim by comparison, the wind cold on her wet skin.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Rory, you need to take it off right now.”
He paced. “I know it’s a lot, but let’s just think for a moment. You promised you’d give it a chance.”
“That was—” Daye stumbled and righted herself, ignoring the hand Rory reached to steady her, the immediate worry in his eyes. “That was before I knew I was trapped here. That I’ll fall apart if I go out of the lands of our house.” She all but spat the last part.
“But does it really matter?” Rory tried. “You’ve been here your whole life. The perimeter of spring encompasses almost all of the places we go—the forest, the meadow, the lake. It shouldn’t be much of a change.”
“It matters. You know it does.”
“But why? You never went out of this land. You never wanted to.”
“What?” A hoarse laugh squeezed itself out of her lungs.
“How can you say that? Of course I wanted to. You said that it was impossible for me to come to the city with you, or go anywhere by train. And now I can’t even …
” She trailed off. A sinking suspicion was forming inside her, one that she didn’t want to name.
She shook her head. “It matters. It matters because I used to have a choice.”
Rory shifted from foot to foot, not meeting her eyes. “There’s something good in it, too,” he offered. “Something we haven’t talked about before. This solves our winter problem.”
“What winter problem?”
“You know, you not being able to come inside for long? It’s not an issue if you’re always in spring.”
“We don’t need a solution for winter because there is nothing to solve.” Daye’s hands fisted by her side. Somewhere above her, a bird called a greeting. Daye wished that she, too, was flying somewhere, anywhere but here.
“We can hardly spend time together in winter. You can barely stand for me to touch you. How can you say it’s not a problem?”
“How can you say that it is? My winter form is me. My autumn form, my summer form, they’re all me, too. You don’t get to decide I need to be fixed.” Her voice cracked. “Rory, you don’t get to choose only the me that’s most comfortable for you and call it love.”
“How can you say that?” His expression seemed to crumble.
“You know I love you. I love you so much. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch you fall apart again and again?
To see what happened just a few minutes ago?
” He stabbed his finger in the direction of the lake, of the summer sky stretching in the distance, pale against the vivid blue of spring.
“To know that you might fall apart any moment if I’m not here beside you?
Do you have any idea what it was like to sit by your bed for two weeks, waiting for my sister?
You were dead. You were literally falling apart.
And it just keeps happening, over and over again.
I just need it to be over. I just need to know that the person I love is safe. ”
“I. Am. Not. A. Person.” Daye enunciated the words carefully. “And there is one thing you keep forgetting: I’m the one it happened to. Me. I am the one who fell apart. Stop using it as an excuse to do whatever you want to me.”
Silence.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“I want you to take it off. Make the seasons go the right way again.”
“You said you’d give it a chance.”
“That’s because you left me no choice!” The words tore out of her in a shout, giving name to the unnamed thing that had lain between them for months now. Years.
They both looked down. Silence stretched between them, punctuated by the lap of the waves on the shore.
“Take it off,” Daye repeated, quieter, unable to look up.
“No.”
The sound pierced the air like a gunshot.
“Rory—”
“I’ll do it when I get back, but I need to know that you’re safe while I’m gone.”
“You need it.”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t take it off right now.
You’re out of season. If I take it off, you’ll fall apart.
We have no choice but to wait for spring.
” He reached for her. Daye flinched away.
“You have to promise me that in the meanwhile, you won’t run out of the perimeter like that again. That you’ll be careful.”
Rory’s voice laced like filaments over Daye’s skin, forcing out the words “I promise.” They tasted like dry silt in her mouth.
“I’m going to Aranrhod in a few days,” Rory continued, “but I’ll be back at the end of December, just after Saint Winebald’s Day. We can discuss it then.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. You have to stop it. You have to. I know there’s a way. Rory—” Her knees felt shaky. “You can’t do this to me. Please. You say you love me. You’re my best friend. Please.”
Rory took a step toward her and took her hands in his.
“I am. I do. I love you more than anything. Please, Daye, just be patient. It’s just until next spring.
I’ll”—he cast about—“I’ll come back home after that.
I’ll finish the year, and then I’ll come back for good.
I can’t cancel the semester at Aranrhod this late—not with it starting in less than a week.
But after that, everything will be the way it used to be.
And I’ll find a different solution. Something that you’ll feel comfortable with.
Just—just wait. Just a little bit longer. ”
Rory was crying now, huge silent tears tracking down his cheeks.
Suddenly Daye hated him for it. Violently.
Viscerally. That he got to cry while she couldn’t.
That he was crying while she was the one trapped here, and he was the one doing the trapping.
That he was lying to her, again. Would he ever stop lying?
This is not love, she thought. Not like this.
She drew herself up to her full height. “Are you going to take it off?”
“I can’t,” Rory said helplessly.
“Would you, if you could?” Her eyes held his.
“No,” he admitted.
Daye thought she had been braced for it, but still, she found herself flinching. She drew back her hands, tugging them out of Rory’s hold.
Rory reached for her again. Daye stepped back, out of reach. “Daye—” His tongue snaked out, licking his lips in a way she had learned to dread over the last months. “Please, I don’t want to fight. In a few days, I’ll be gone for four months. Please, just stop—”
Daye covered her ears, shaking her head in denial. “No. Stop! No, no, no.”
Rory stopped talking.
“Please, Rory. Please don’t order me to be okay with it.” Daye’s hands hovered just over her ears, close but not touching. “Please, you know I’ll have no choice but to do what you tell me. Please, please, if you love me, don’t do it.”
Rory froze.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rory said carefully. “Of course I love you. You know I do. Please, Daye, you have to just calm down for a moment and—”
But she was already running away, as fast as she could.